Monday, August 30, 2010

Hume is revered by the atheists as though he is the only philosopher they will listen to. Even those who say "Philosophy is bs" love and laud Hume. One of the most cherished things that Hume had to say was his misconceptions about miracles. Atheists treat that famous passage as though it has canonical status, for them it does. But Hume gets it wrong on both counts: he doesn't understand miracles, nor does he understand "laws of nature." Both observations are apparent form the opening line of the passage:

A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature;

The problem here is that science no longer regards nature as run by prescriptive laws. Every time I would argue that physical laws prescriptive, the atheist guru HRG (CARM ath) would tell me that this no longer the case. They are just descriptions of what happens. They are not real laws. But this in fact contradicts completely what their other guru, Hume, tells them. In fact they have to take this contradictory position if they want to argue against my third God argument Fire in the equations. It's also necessitated in their argument against final case. In fact Has was exaggerating, it's not as though no scientist still holds for prescriptive laws. the truth of it is there is a dispute in science between "regulaterians" and "Necessitarians." Nevertheless, those who say they are not prescriptive are contradicting Hume and rendering his point null. How can miracles violate laws if they only describe what happens? If they only describe, then miracles could just as well be part of the description, so there is noting to prevent them.

Actually laws of nature are not the confused with scientific laws or natural law.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Laws of Nature are to be distinguished both from Scientific Laws and from Natural Laws. Neither Natural Laws, as invoked in legal or ethical theories, nor Scientific Laws, which some researchers consider to be the scientists' attempts to state or approximate the Laws of Nature, will be discussed in this article. Instead, this article explores issues in contemporary metaphysics. Within metaphysics, there are two competing theories of Laws of Nature. On one account, the Regularity Theory, Laws of Nature are statements of the uniformities or regularities in the world; they are mere descriptions of the way the world is. On the other account, the Necessitarian Theory, Laws of Nature are the "principles" which govern the natural phenomena of the world. That is, the natural world "obeys" the Laws of Nature. This seemingly innocuous difference marks one of the most profound gulfs within contemporary philosophy, and has quite unexpected, and wide-ranging, implications.

That throws up an even greater problem for the atheist. How many atheist told me that metaphysics is just fairy tales and that we don't need philosophy? Yet here is their great guru Hume using philosophy and Metaphysics no less! Be that as it may, here is a contradiction for them. If laws of nature or "laws of physics" in science (ether one) are merely descriptive, then where is the basis for standing against miracles?

Moreover, I say that Hume says miracles are a violation of the laws of Nature, but that is a misconception of the concept of miracle. First of all, it's a misconception of the supernatural to believe that supernatural means "breaking into the natural," or a "contradiction" to laws of nature. Supernatural is not a contradiction to the the laws of nature, they are framework in which the laws of nature make sense and in which the laws of nature have their warrant. The concept of the supernatural has been misconceived in modern times. It was first degraded in the Renaissance, and this process began with the dissolution of the medieval synthesis. See my pages on the Supernatural, (Doxa). Thus miracles are not violations of anything. They are, as C.S. Lewis put it occasions where the lower law bends to the higher (see his book on Miracles, sorry I don't have a page number or link). An example of what he's talking about is seen in Martin Luther King's speech ("I have a Dream") where he says "The arch of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward Justices." what is the talking about? The Supernatural is the ground and end of the natural. That's the framework, when I the SN is a larger framework in which the natural plays out, that's what I mean. The natural is rooted in the SN as it's origin and it is moving toward SN end which are set by the higher protocol. Thus when SN effects happen, it is because the lower is obeying the higher, not because the higher is breaking in.

Miracles are also contextual.It's almost meaningless to talk about them. Miracles could naturalistic because the dichotomy between SN and N is artificial and the creation of this modern era which sought to destroy religious thinking and to create a fixed standard of science as the umpire of reality and rule out all that is not part of their naturalistic ideology. The difference between miracles and "anomalies" is merely that miracles have a religious connotation. When an anomalous event happens and produces verification of a religious belief it's a miracle.

The nature of science as paradigm driven is also a major theoretical reason to quite thinking in terms of this dichotomy between N and SN. Science is not cumulative, scientific facts are stacked up until they equal truth. As Thomas Kuhn says, When the paradigm shifts the former anomalies in the old paradigm become the proofs of the new paradigm. The facts of the old paradigm become anomalies under the new. So facts are not stacking to equal progress, they are relative to the paradigm. The current paradigm is naturalism; that will change in some way eventually. when it does change the arguments and facts used to back naturalism will be extent,t hey will no longer be regarded as facts but useless anomalies. Hume's statement can't hold any real cogency for us because its entirely relative to the paradigm. It's already looking pretty out of date since the prevailing wind seems to be blowing in the direction of the descriptive laws of nature crowd. If laws are only descriptive, miracle can be part of the description. There is nothing to prevent them.

Hume goes on:

and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.

Here we have the essence of circular reasoning. Now any atheists have to tried to sell this passage on the basis that he's not saying that laws of nature are prescriptive laws but that our experience of them is unalterably. In fact he is saying nothing more than, as they would have us believe: we never see miracles so we must assume they never happen, they are not part of the description. I think it's clear he's not saying that. I think it is clear that he's saying laws of nature (and thus "the laws of physics") are prescriptive and unalterable. He speaks of unalterable. Now it's true he says the experience is unalterable. But it's the experience of the laws he says. So he is saying that the laws are unalterable and thus our experience of them is as well. If not, then there could some day be an exception. If one saw a miracle at some point that would still have to invalidate all the observations of the past, unless one assumes that there is a prescriptive element and that's why the observe rations are always the same.

The circle in reason is here: we do see miracles. There are thousands of claims of miracle. There are 4000 remarkable cases at Lourdes. That means they are amazing, they can't explained. They fail to be declared official only because of some technicality. But Hume would, at least in the interpretation of most atheist, we must discount hose cases because according to our experiences they don't happen. So those must be hoaxes. Yet, they do happen according to our experiences, becasue these are the ones' that people have experienced.

This is so obviously circular reasoning:

X doesn't happen because we never see X

we can discount claims that people have seen x because:

we never see x.

Hume:

Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them?

Here he clearly appeals to the authority of the laws of nature, they prevent them, to happen they must be agreeable. That means his views are metaphysics, they validate the need for metaphysical observation. They are also outmoded and relative to the philosophical discussion still progressing. I've seen atheist vow and declare that his argument is totally about the regularity of our observations, not prescriptive laws. Here he clearly says whatever happens must agree with the laws.

Hume:

Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature.

Here I take issue on the grounds that he doesn't understand the true concept of the supernatural.Miracles are contextual not "factual."

It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen.

Here he intentionally blurs the discretion between the perspective nature of laws and the observation of frequency of behavior. I think he is purposely blurring the distinction. He shifts it back over to what he sees happen because it's the only basis he has for denying the resurrection. He can't argue that there's a physical law against it, except by the implication that we never see it, as argument from sing. He has the weight of common experience, and yet it is only argument from sign, thus dangerously close to fallacy. There is no "structural reason" from the laws of nature that would prevent it.

But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation....

Doubly fallacious because miracles are supposed to be contradictions to what we see. In trying to say it can't happen because it's not naturalistic he's merely evoking the ideology of naturalism in order to impose the circular reasoning that naturalists accept axiomatically.

Hume's logic:

Atheist: The Res couldn't happen because it violates what we observe

Believer: but some people did observe it, so it is part of what we observe

Atheist: no it can't because we never observe such things.

But of course, we did that time. It's a circular reasoning that is used to ignore counter proofs on the premise that they can't exist because if they did they would be counter, we can't have that! The truth of it is there are millions of claims that miracles are seen and that they happen.

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....'

Of course this is meaningless prattle. It's more circular reasoning. He is saying that because miracles contradict our ordinary observation (which of course they should because that's their definition) then to establish it it would have to be more amazing that it would not be true." But of course if that was the case then would would have to say "that X isn't true contradicts our regular observation of the world." Now how could it be that miracles not being true could ever be so obscure a condition that they would contradict our normal experience? In such a case our normal experience would be miracles. thus they would not be miracles. This is so like the dictum about extraordinary evidence. I'm sure that's Sagan got it. The problem with that is it's absurd because no one can say what "extraordinary" evidence is. It's just a trick so atheists can keep raising the bar. Of course this what they always do. No evidence is ever good enough.

When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

In the foregoing reasoning we have supposed, that the testimony, upon which a miracle is founded, may possibly amount to an entire proof, and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy: But it is easy to shew, that we have been a great deal too liberal in our concession, and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence.

In fact this quote basically says "our ideology rules out miracle a priori so ignore any evidence because it's ideologically improper." By the circular reasoning of the ideology any contrary evidence must be ruled because it is contrary.

Clearly the more rational standard would be to take whatever cannot be explained, having been documented with sufficient evidence to establish veracity, as assumed miraculous if violates our sense of "normal" reality, with out any biased pre determination as to the possibility of such events. By definition miracles are anomalies. Anomalies are absorbed into the paradigm until so many have been absorbed that the paradigm can no longer hold them, then the paradigm shifts. Kuhn establishes that when paradigms shift the supporters of the old regime defend it just as though and in the same way as supporters of the old guard stave off a mounting resolution. For this reason we can expect the paradigm to be defend by an ideology, and one that unfairly rules out any change. Such is clearly the case. We see that the paradigm has shifted from "materialism" to naturalism and physical ism. This is because materialism couldn't hold the anomalies. The paradigms they are shifting from physicalism to property dualism and other smile face versions of physicalism which are closer to being miracle friendly. This I will take up next time.

Friday, August 27, 2010

I have been deeply moved by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco's (1883-1949) painting of Jesus chopping down his own cross. The Christ of this mural prostrate is drawn in a very primitive style. Christ is not the Pascal lamb but refuses his destiny and will not go to the cross. The painting is disturbing because the first impression is that of blasphemy. Is the artist mocking Christ? Is he rejecting faith at its most sacred level? Rosco is not trying to blaspheme Jesus, nor is he denying the atonement. I find this painting very moving not our any rejection of Christ’s sacrifice or any desire to defame the doctrine of atonement, but because for me it says Jesus would, weather as the sun of God, or if he was only a man in history, refuse to be the poster boy for institutional hypocrisy, Jesus would allow himself to be used as symbol to sanctify the institution as it oppresses the poor and ignores the needs of the people. I believe that the real Jesus of history is both the Son of God and the man of history, and he does refuse this role. The real Jesus was a revolutionary of a most remarkable kind. Often we hear that Jesus is the great ethical teacher, and he claimed to be the Messiah, and savior of the world. We usually understand his ethics as an addendum, something any self respecting son of God would be required to have, but mainly irrelevant to his claims of godhood. Jesus ethics were far from being an addendum, however, they were the weaponry and major battle tactics of his amazing revolution. Politics and religion were intertwined in first century Hebrew society. Jesus’ ethics and his Messianic claims work together to fulfill his ultimate mission of world saving and together they make for one the most unique revolutions in human history.

It is not so strange to think of Jesus as a revolutionary. There were even Priests in Latin America in the 60’s, such as Camillio Tores but joined Che and became gorilla fighters. But Jesus the man of history was a true revolutionary. The region from which Jesus is said to have sprung is known as “the Galilee.” The Galilee was a hot bed of revolution, filled with uprisings and tensions. The Romans regarded it as the seat of Zealotry where the real revolutionaries were based. Just four miles from Jesus’ family farm “Nazareth” is a major metropolis known as Serapes. Just four miles down the road Jesus would have had access to what was then modern sophistication, political unrest and new ideas. Nor did he have to go to India to learn of traditions beyond his native prudential Judaism, the major trade route to India went right by his house,. That route lay on the plain of Megiddo where the end of the world is supposed to take place, the final battle between good and evil. Nazareth overlooks the plain of Megiddo and apparently the battle of Armageddon. All of these influences would have been at work in Jesus upbringing. Not to mention the fact that he was a descendent of David, born in Bethlehem and named as the high priest of Zechariah (Joshua = Jesus) who is linked to the Messiah (Zechariah 4).

Jesus revolution, however, was a bit odd. He did not lead an army nor did he command his followers to fight or pick up weapons. His was a non-violent revolution in the mode of Gandhi and that is where his ethics play a major role in backing his mission. The role of the Messiah in the society of Israel was that of political liberator, but it took on overtones of cosmic proportion. In the book of Isaiah we see the concept of Messiah first begins to be introduced, and is then back read into previous statements such as Moses admonition that “a prophet like me will come” and even God’s word to Eve “I will place enmity between the serpent and your seed.” The Messianic kingdom sketched out at the end of Isaiah is not the millennial kingdom of Christ’s post epochal reign on earth, but Israel after the return from the exile. By the second temple period and the time of Jesus, the concept had grown to almost divine proportions. The Messiah was to stand on the top of the temple and shout “Jerusalem your time at hand” the end of the world would ensue. The Messiah was to rise from the dead all of fallen Israel and for that reason he held the keys of life and death. The Jews did not see the Messiah as world redeemer; they did not see him as atoning sacrifice. These weren't entirely Christian innovations, they were foreshadowed at Qumran. But they weren't mainstream. The Jews certainly did not expect the Messiah to be crucified and raise from the dead.

Jesus was such a radical revolutionary, that is a "strange" different, unconventional one, that when his guys made noises about actually installing him on the throne the ran from them. That's because he knew, as everyone from the Galilee knew, the futility of trying to fight the Romans. The slaughter of the innocents in the book of Luke, is not recorded in history. Atheists are always quick to remind us of this. But it does not have to be because that kind of thin happened all the time. Even a gathering as innocent as the sermon on the mount risked attack by Romans even though nothing provocative was being said. When they started talking about making Jesus king he slopped away and ran from them. Not because he lost his nerve, but because that would totally divert the people from his true purpose. Jesus has no intention of leading an armed revolt that was the opposite of what he had in mind. neither did he intend to pacify the people to accept pain and hardship with platitudes about pie in the sky. Was his program escapist? Was it just a personal nirvana with no touch stone in reality or responsibility to the world? It was not this ether. It was a practical and pragmatic system fro changing the nature of the world by changing the way people relate to each other. He accomplished this by taking people out of the world while keeping them in it.

In Jesus' system we live by the dictates of a higher citizenship, a world beyond this one ruled entirely by God. This is echoed in the model prayer he taught the disciples "thy kingdom come thy will be don't on earth, as it is in heaven." The device Jesus used for this trick of living by the rules of world while being physically in another, we the kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God was the essence of Jesus' message:

Mt 3:2
and saying, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

atheists think Jesus was saying "If you don't believe in me you will go to hell." But he actually never says this. All the action is in the kingdom and the kingdom is the big deal. The coming of the kingdom Jesus makes out to be an immanent, immediate, almost emergency status event that will happen soon, and when it does, man is it a big thing!

Mt 4:17
From that time on Jesus began to preach, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is near."

Mt 4:23
Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.

Mr 1:15 - Show Context
"The time has come," he said. "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news!"

He never says the Kingdom is reward becasue you had the good sense to believe on him, but he does speak as though its the answer to all our troubles:

Mt 5:3
"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Mt 5:10
Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Most revolutionaries come to abolish the standing order, not imposes a kingdom, one kingdom over another.It is within this context that he talks about the ethics and personal relationships and how to relate to people. This is not just some ad on that's in addition to believing the right things, nor is it unrelated, but it is an outgrowth, a logical extension, one is the basis of the other. The Kingdom is coming. It's power is already here. We can be part of it now, because it has two aspects. This is "realized Eschatology" which was developed by the theologian C.H.Dodd; the kingdom has an "already" dimension" and a "not yet" dimension. We live in the kingdom now even as we are in the world. How we treat each other is an integral aspect of the kingdom.

Mt 5:20
For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

Mt 7:21 - Show Context
"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.

Living as though we were in the kingdom now is the most radical move of any revolutionary program. We don't need to hurt anyone, we don't need to fight anyone. ;We just treat people the way God wants us to treat them, out of love. Over time like the mustard seed int he parable he told, the kingdom will grow into a mighty tree that will shade the world. Of course that brings up a sore spot. Some might suggest that has not happened. Others might suggest are still working on it. I think it's worked out much better than skeptical types are willing to admit. Of course the problem is the quasi religious types who think they can manipulate the truth for their devices, and the legalistic types who think they have to kiss up the quasi religious types or they aren't religious enough. While there's a long way to go we need to be cognizant of the fact that Christianity is more than just a social agenda and plan for living. The Kingdom of God is not just a social club or a political prgram it's spiritual power.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

The Infinite causal regress is an important issue in dealing with the cosmological argument, especially the Kalam version, and the argument form final cause. It basically means that any infinitely recurring causality for any event is impossible, since one never actually arrives at a cause. The importance of this argument applies not only to the now largely abandoned notion of an oscillating universe, but to any finite causes of space/time. This is because in light of the impossibility it means that the ultimate cause of the universe must be a final cause, that is to say, the cause behind all other causes, but itself uncaused and eternal. These are two major issues because they indicate why the ultimate cause of the universe has to be God. Since arbitrary necessities are impossible, the ultimate cause cannot be something which is itself contingent, such as an eternal singularity. The ultimate cause, or "final cause" must be God, since God is a logical necessity.

But lately skeptics have sought to deny these principles. They have actually been denying that infinite causal regress is impossible. This causes me to suspect that they don' really understand the concept. For no one truly understanding the notion of an eternally repeating cause could seriously consider that an infinite causal regress can actually exist. But this denial takes two forms. First, they just deny it outright. They don't' believe me. And secondly, they sometimes try to provide examples such as the number line, that's a favorite. And of course the ever popular claim that God is also an infinite Regress. That is three arguments to deal with:

1) Out right deniel that ICR is impossible

2) The argument that one can find examples in Mathematics

3) The idea that God is also an ICR

Before dealing with the nuberline I will just make a little argument on the impossibility of an actual infinite causal regress (that is that one could actually exist in real life).

1)A beginingless series of events is impossible.

A actual infinite is defined as A beginingless series of events This is not to say that nothing actual could be eternal, but that a series of events with no beginning cannot exist in reality. A thing is said to be actually infinite if part of it is equal to the whole. For example, mathematicians show that the number of fractions is equal to the number of whole numbers, even though fractions can divide whole numbers infinitesimally, because its all infinity and infinity is without number. Now here I'm distinguishing between existence in actuality, the "real world," as opposed to existence in mathematics.

A linear Causal infinite regress is thought to be possible by Auqinas and Farther Copeleston, but only if it has a prior hierarchical cause. In other words, the causality can be not just linear but also hierarchical. A hierarchical infinite regress is also impossible for the same reason, it never really has a cause since it has no beginning. A liniar regress of causal nature is impossible without a hierarchical cause.

The great mathematician David Hilbert argues for the notion that a beginingless series of events with no higher cause is impossible. ["On the Infinite" in Philosophy and Mathematics (Englewood Cliffs New Jersey: Prentice Hall), 1964, 139, 141.)

(2) ICR is Circular Reasoning

William Row Quoted on website below

www.faithquest.com/philos...cosmo.html

Rowe's version of the standard answer goes as follows: Suppose we are wondering why A exists. Suppose further that A was linearly caused to exist by B and that B was linearly caused to exist by C, etc. Here is a causal series, Rowe says, which might well extend infinitely back in time. This is because we need do nothing other than point out B in order to explain why A exists; although B was itself caused to exist by C, we still need refer no further back than B to explain the existence of A. But, Rowe says, suppose we are trying to explain not why A exists but rather why a certain sort of causal activity - the activity of causing A presently to exist - is going on. Here we cannot as before merely point to B. because presumably B is itself being caus ed to engage in the causal activity of causing A presently to exist (and is thus only a kind of intermediary). Accordingly, we have to talk about C's causal activity the causal activity of causing B to cause A presently to exist. This, then, is a series that cannot be extended infinitely; this series must have a first member. For if there were no first member, we would never succeed in arriving at an explanation of the existence of the causal activity of causing A presently to exist. We would never be able to explain why this activity is going on.11

(But this author supports Aquians' and Copleston in saying that linier causal regress is possible but not a hierarchical one. Easy to see why he says this, because he believed the universe to be inifinite in time, but he still asserts that there must be a higher eternal generation)

Just extend Rowe's argument a little further to see that ICR is circular reasoning. The need for a cause is granted bye ICR advocate; and that need will be supplied, so they say, by the cause of the previous event (for example in an oscillating universe, the previous Big Bang supplies the need for the cause of this universe). But, when it comes to explaining the ca usual relation to the whole series they will say that is uncessary, because they have that previous link in the chain and it's covered by the infinite serious of previous links, but nothing ever explains how the previous link could be there, except a previous link.

This is just circular reasoning because no matter how far back you go you have a cause that allows for any particualr link to exist. Take this example:

a => b, b => c, => d => e, e => f

Now if we say "how can f exist without a cause? They say well it has a cause in e. But e doesn't have a cause except in a equally unexplained d, and go back as far as you will, there is never an explanation for how this could be. Yet they agree that the causal principal is necessary because they keep sticking in intermeidate causes. If the causal principal is necessary, then there must be a final cause taht expalins how it could begin. Causality is linear and if they are going to argue for cyclical universe they have cover a linear concept of casu and effect.

If a series of events go back in time forever it is a beginingless series of events. IF the universe existed forever, for example, this would constittue an actual infinite. This is because the series of events that led to the current universe would be infinite. This is to distinguish it form a "potential infinite" which might be achieved by adding one event to another in a series and going on infinitely. But a series of events that has already transpired infinitely is an actual infinite.

Or let's look at the notion of finishing an infinite series. If a man claims to have been counting for infinity and is at last about to reach zero, he says -3, -2, -1, he's finally finished. Yet, he should have finished eons before, an infinity of time passed eons ago, or centuries, or decades, so he should have finished by now. Another strange paradox is that if we could check this man's counting in the past we would never find him counting. For he would have finished an infinity ago so we could never find him counting at any time that we ever checked his counting. Yet if he never counted he could never finnish. Now may skeptics are going to say that it is impossible to count infinitely and so forth, yes, obviously. But these are the kinds of examples used in transfinite mathematics to illustrate this point.

"This illustrates once more that the series of past events could not be without a beginning for if you could not count numbers from eternity, neither could you have events form eternity. These examples underline the absurdity of a beginingless series of events in time, because such a series is an actual infinite and an actual infinite cannot exist. This means that the universe began to exist, which is what we set out to porve" (William Lane Criag in his early work, The Existence of God and The begining of the Universe Here's Life Publishers 1979 p.4 [and don't forget the empirical scientific data which also proves this same pint with the Big Bang).

3) An Actual Infinite Cannot Be Achieved by Adding one event to the series, thus the series of events in time can never be actually infinite.

This can also be understood in the fallacy to trying to count to infinity. This should be pretty obvious, because no matter how many events we add we can always add one more and continue to add events forever. One can never count to infinity. Most people understand this pretty well.So one could never add one event to another and reach infinity, it's the same thing. This is also called The impossibility of traversing the infinite.

Thus an actual infinite could come to exist only if all the memebers came to exist at the same time. As Craig points out "if an infinite number of Days existed before today, today would never come because one can never traverse the infinite." (50).

Philosopher John Hospers states:

"If an infinite series has proceeded the present moment, how did we get to the present moment? How could we get to the present moment--where we obviously are Now--if the present moment was proceeded by an infinite series of events?" [An Indtorduction to Philosophical Analysis, 2nd ed. (London: Rutledge and Kegan Paul, 1967) 434)

This First argument, the impossibility of a beginingless series of events with no higher cause was repeatedly defended and always successfully by G.J.Withrow, Professor of Mathematics at University of London's Imperial College of Science and Technology. see "The Age of the Universe,"British Journal for Philosopher of Science (1954-55) PP215-225. Natural Philosophy of Time (London: Thomas Nelson, 1961) See also Philsopher William Rowe The Cosmological Argument Princeton University press 1975

Now What if someone argues that the infinite series would be beyond time? In that case the skpetic loses the argument that there is no causality before time. IF there is no motion, causality, or change beyond time than there cannot be a series of events leading form one cause to another beyond time.

Now let's examine the three arguments.

1) Out right deniel that ICR is impossible.

Well, if they don't believe the logic, they are pretty hopeless. And if they dont' accept the word of the mathematicians that are quoted, there isn't much you can do about it. But it seems pretty obvious that if you have an ifinite series of causes leading back infinitely you would never have an actual cause, and the thing to be caused would not exist, just as you cannot count to infinity, or just as the counter claiming to have arrived at zero from infinity would never have actually counted.

2) That the number line is an example from Mathematics that proves the actual infinite, or Infinite causal regress.

David Hilbert has prove, as quoted above, that transfinite mathematics cannot exist in life. The number line is not an actual series of events, it is only hypothetical. Moreover numbers do not cause each other. It is not a causal regress.

3) That God is an ICR

This is merely to confusse an infinite with an infinite regress The ICR is an infinite series of events. God is not a series of events. God is not an event, God is not a recurrsion of causes, he is one final cause. God is not in time, he is eternal. So the two are not analogous at all. God is not an ICR.

The ICR is an impossibility, it cannot exist in actuality. This means the universe cannot be eternal, for the universe is an infinite series of causes, each one leading to the next. It certainly means the old oscillating universe notion of eternally recurring big bangs and crunches is right out! Therefore, there must be a final cause which is eternal and is not a series of events but one final cause that transcends the chain of cause and effect. It causes the universe but it is not in turn an effect of any other cause.

Aristotle and Bertrand Russell agree

Robert Koons, University of Texas

www.la.utexas.edu/phl356/lec5.html

Lecutre 5 Phil 356 Theism Spring 98

Another example is mentioned by al-Ghazali. Suppose that the sun and moon have each been revolving around the earth throughout an infinite past. There are 12 revolutions of the moon for every revolution of the sun. As we go back in time, the gap between the number of months and years grows ever wider, yet, taken as a whole, there are an equal number of elapsed months and years (both infinite). Cantorian set theory agrees with this paradoxical result: the cardinal number of months and years is exactly the same.

Bertrand Russell discusses a similar paradox, which he called the Tristam Shandy paradox. Tristam is writing is own autobiography. He takes a whole year to write down the events of a single day. In an infinite amount of time, Shandy can complete the task. Here's a time-reversed version of the paradox: suppose that Tristam is clairvoyent -- he writes about his own future. Last year he wrote about today's events; in the year before last, he wrote about yesterday's events. Today, he has just completed an infinite autobiography, cover all the events of his infinite past, despite the fact that, as we go farther in the past, Shandy is every further behind in the task -- i.e., 1000 years ago, he was still writing about the events of only the last three days.

Final note: The paradox of Time.

Some thinkers believe that time is an infinite series. I do not agree with this notion, I accept t=0, time begins in the Big Bang. But this is a valid viewpoint, I just dont' happen to agree. But that does not prove that a beginingless series of events with no higher cause can exist. Time can still have a higher cause, God perhaps, in heierarchical fashion.

Meta: "Religious evolved out of the human contact with the sense of the numinous. . . . Mystical experince at the root of all religions"

Brap: I have read your links in the past where you discuss the studies about mystical experiences and their documented transformations. The reason this atheist doesn’t view that evidence as a rational reason to believe in God is that the cause of the mystical experiences themselves is too easily explained by the current state of knowledge about neuropsychology, cognitive sciences, etc.

That is total absolute bull shit. I've demonstrated over and over again that it is not the case! That's the usual atheist tendency to say "Ok if one littel tiny connection is made tot he natural realm then the the whole thing is explained naturally. Here's an analogy to what's going on there. That's like if you argue with a young earth guy and shows conclusively that one fossil is really much younger than it's supposed to be, they says "see that proves the whole age of the earth is off and it's really only 10,000 years old." Then he doesn't' listen to your answer and goes off for the next 40 years telling people he's proved that the earth is only 10,000 years old. That's exactly what you and all other atheists are doing. Its' become an easy mantra for dismissing one of the most powerful arguments for belief that has ever been. People should be coming to God in droves if they understood the research, but it's easy to muddle and easy to dismiss since people are not concerned with details and not careful with facts and couple of buzz words like "naturalistic" can through off years of research for no reason.

(1) no research, not Tarico or anyone who claims to have evoked religious experience by manipulating the brain has actually used the M scale (invented by Ralph Hood Jr. University of Tennessee Chattanooga) (except the Grifiths study of Johns Hopkins, I will deal with that in a moment).

That means they can't prove they did evoke mystical experience because they can't demonstrate what it is. The M scale is the most valid measurement scale because it has been validated in the field cross culturally many times. Without that there is no proof that mystical experience can be evoked by brain chemistry or stimulating parts of the brain.

(2) Grifiths said that his study does not disprove divine presence in mystical experience.

(3) Andrew Newberg, one of the pioneers in research on the genetic basis for religious experience tells us that the brain is constructed such that if God spoke to us he would have to use brain chemistry. So the fact that we find a link form Religious experience to brain chemistry no more proves it's only naturalistic than does the fact that we have ears. If God wishes to speak to Moses he must gives Moses ears, and if he wishes us to feel his presence he has to go through brain chemistry. God himself made us that way (if God made us) so we should not find it odd that there is a connection, it doesn't mean that much.

(4) There is no research that links the naturalistic processes to thee outcomes.

Brap:I think you had a blog post a few months ago arguing that it doesn’t matter if there are natural explanations for these mystical experiences or the sense of the numinous. If I’m getting the gist of that right, it takes me back to a question I asked earlier in this comment, which is how can we tell the difference between a God that interacts with our world in a way that doesn’t violate the laws of nature and a God that does not exist?

I answered that question too and you have not responded to it. The result of having the experience cannot be explained. The qulia that make up the experience itself are linked to brain chemistry and manipulation of the brain, but what is not linked to anything is the link to the result; the life transforming effects. There is no external cause that can be linked to long term positive effects of such a dramatic nature, and all the organic processes are degenerative. There is nothing that can explain how it is that having this experience changes your life so.

There's also no way to explain how such experiences would give such noetic qualities. So there is an explanatory gap.

Meta: "Creation myths as we know them are late inventions."

Brap: Is “late” anything after the Pentateuch was written?

Pentateuch guy did not invent creation myth. That was written and redacted in the form we have it in the inter-testamental period, very recent. But even it's invention in oral form which pre-dates Summer is relatively recent in anthropological and world history terms. Anything after the last great ice age is "recent." Humans were sensing the numinous and burying their dead with herbs and flowers and celebrations of after life 30,000 years ago.

Meta: "Creation myths as we know them are mythology and mythology is about archetypes . . . It's about the psyche not about history."

Brap: The creation myth in Genesis does seem fairly important for Christianity, though, because that is the reason, as I understand it, humans are burdened with original sin.

The point is, besides the fact that you used creation myth as supposedly religious explanation for scientific fact and I said it's theological tenet not an explainable for the world, the major point is that humans have been sensing the numinous since before they were actually humans (Neanderthal 60,000 years ago give evidence o burying the dead prepared for afterlife and decorating knives and other implements--which indicates magical ideas). So religion has been a part of humanity from the inception of modern humans. Creation myths are relatively recent (within 5000 years). they are not the reason anyone believes and they aer not designed to explain stuff like rain. But of cousre the question "where did we come from" is in there but it had more metaphysical import than it did scientific curiosity. Religion is not must primitive failed scinece. It's an existential response to existential questions.

Brap:I have asked this question on other blogs, but never have gotten an answer: Without a literal Adam and Eve, how are humans burdened with original sin?

We are not. That's why I don't bleieve in a literal Adam and Eve. Not all Christians believe in orignial sin. That's a Catholic (Augustinian) doctrine and it's been distorted anyway. Augustine just said it's the basic capacity to sin. Its' not surplus guilt. Original sin dos not say we are born guilty of sin. I think the question you really want to ask is "how is the capacity of sin transmitted to humanity if there is no one original sinner that led humanity down into the ditch, right?"

Answer: There does not have to be a one original sin that leads people down. The basic tendency of being sentient and being self transcendent that leads to anxiety and causes people to sin. It happens to everyone just like getting sexual urges and wanting to master-bait when you reach a certain level of development happens to everyone. I'm not equate sex with sin, but it's that kind of thing, you come of ge, Its lose of innocence.

Brap: 7. I have read “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, and I can’t think of anything in that book I disagree with.

Meta: "I have not read that book, but I'd be willing to bet that he got it wrong. If what Brap is saying is an accurate reflection I would assume that Sagan makes the same fallacious assumptions that Brap does."

Brap: I would estimate that less than 5% of the book deals directly with religion, and Sagan is much gentler on religion than Dawkins or Hitchens would be while heavily sedated. I would love to see a review of that book by a person of faith, to see if they disagree with any sections not dealing with religion, and why.

I have no doubt that he is not raving like Dawkins and Hitchens. I like Sagan's personality, he came across as a nice guy. I enjoyed Cosmos on PBS. Maybe I'll review the book if I get a chance to get it. On the other hand, the things I'm calling "fallacies" are ideas form the nineteenth century that even benign liberals get wrong, such as the assumption that religion was invented to explain nature.

Brap:As I recall there are sections where he does focus on the mythological aspects of religion, so you wouldn’t like those parts.

Depends upon what he says

Meta: "We need to move beyond the simplistic understanding of the world that seeks to set "scientifically proved" "facts" as the foundation of the world view off against all other forms of knowledge. . . . Thus we need to shed this delimiting crutch that only "scientific proof" counts as a valid reason to believe something and move toward a global understanding of knowledge in general."

Brap: “The Demon-Haunted World” clearly spells out the dangers of believing in things with insufficient proof, providing examples throughout history and in modern times. It’s easy to come away from that book both scared for and disappointed in humanity. Groupthink is a powerful and potentially dangerous phenomenon, and nobody and no group is immune from it, including scientists and atheists.

Sagan's assertions about religion are not backed by real facts or studies. I'm sure he never new anything about the research I've done. A lot of it was not done until after he died. you are basing the case on fiction. I don't need a diatribe against religion to be disappointed in human history. I can understand (I say "can" I share) disappointment of fellow political liberals in the nature of fundamentalism especially when it comes to the politics of the era.

Belief in God is not based upon lack of evidence. Atheists join my parade of shame of things humans do that disappoint me when it comes to discussion of reasons for bleief in God.

I have a ton of evidence for God. the inability of atheists to evaluate it fairly or rationally is shocking and disheartening. The atheist ability to fairly evaluate evidence for God is like the ability of people in the deep south in the 1950s to fairly evaluate the notion of integration. God is speaking to our hearts. Atheists are people who closet heir hearts to the truth God is speaking because they seek to protect little pet sins. The junkie analogy would fit there. It's like trying to get junkies to rationally decide to quite drugs.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Brap: Humans have wondered about the origins of the earth, the sun, the stars, and themselves for a long time. Many creation myths were developed in ancient times in an attempt to explain these origins, and these creation myths are easily proven to be untrue given the current state of scientific knowledge. The account of creation in the book of Genesis appears to be another easily disproven creation myth.

my previous answer:

Meta: “This is interesting because he takes at face value the creation myth as the point of departure for justification. . . . (1) it assumes that the reason for belief in modern world is the same as the reason for the existence of religion in the ancient world.” Brap: A major factor in both is the carryover of the beliefs of the prior generation. Any original religious beliefs typically lead to schism. “(2) it assumes that religion exists in order to explain where we came from,as though that's the only major question that really concenred ancinet man.”

His most recent answer:

Brap: I think religions came about to explain not only origins but also what happens after death, and what causes weather, natural disasters, disease, etc. But I think the true origin of religion has to do with two things: A) Worship of imaginary gods who controlled the weather and the few other things early humans cared about (such as fertility, or bountiful crops once people started farming.)

That's demonstrably disproved. The sense of the numinous is real and it can be seen at work in all religion without exception. Since mystics are found in all religions going back as far s we have writings form them, and since the facts about their experiences being totally universal despite their doctrines being different, and the studies that have demonstrates that they habitually relate in the same way to their experiences, the world over; it's pretty obvious that mystical experience and the sense of the numinous has more to do with the reason for religion than does this other stuff, which is really just atheist reading their own interests in scinece into religious history. I've quoted that material before at length. In fact I think I quoted in relation to this discussion with you.

"The experience of pure consciousness is typically called "mystical". The essence of the mystical experience has been debated for years (Horne, 1982). It is often held that "mysticism is a manifestation of something which is at the root of all religions (p. 16; Happold, 1963)." The empirical assessment of the mystical experience in psychology has occurred to a limited extent."

Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., is a monk of Mount Savior Monastery in the Finger Lake Region of New York State and a member of the board of the Council on Spiritual Practices. He holds a Ph.D. from the Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna and has practiced Zen with Buddhist masters. His most recent book is Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1984). "If the religious pursuit is essentially the human quest for meaning, then these most meaningful moments of human existence must certainly be called "religious." They are, in fact, quickly recognized as the very heart of religion, especially by people who have the good fortune of feeling at home in a religious tradition."

Quote: "It is the experience of the transcendent, including the human response to that experience, that creates faith, or more precisely the life of faith. [Huston] Smith seems to regard human beings as having a propensity for faith, so that one speaks of their faith as "innate." In his analysis, faith and transcendence are more accurate descriptions of the lives of religious human beings than conventional uses of the word, religion. The reason for this has to do with the distinction between participant and observer. This is a fundamental distinction for Smith, separating religious people (the participants) from the detached, so-called objective students of religious people (the observers). Smith's argument is that religious persons do not ordinarily have "a religion." The word, religion, comes into usage not as the participant's word but as the observer's word, one that focuses on observable doctrines, institutions, ceremonies, and other practices. By contrast, faith is about the nonobservable, life-shaping vision of transcendence held by a participant..."

Smith considers transcendence to be the one dimension common to all peoples of religious faith: "what they have in common lies not in the tradition that introduces them to transcendence, [not in their faith by which they personally respond, but] in that to which they respond, the transcendent itself..."(11)

Brap:

Any young tribesman who told the elders it was a waste of time to do a rain dance because the rain is a result of natural processes would have been quite the outcast. As the saying goes, in an insane society, the sane person appears insane. So belief in the false gods persisted and other false gods were added over time.

I said this before you didn't answer it. That is a fictional account! you have no historical examples at all whatsoever. you made that up because it's the romanticized crap of the enlightenment that philosophies used to flatter themselves as brae and daring and so forth. You have no evdience that it ever happened. You are also attributing forms of thought to people that they were not capable of. You are assuming there were all these budding young Einsteins out in the boonies herding sheep and discovering the valid reasoning of cause and effect, there's no evidence it ever went down that way.

Then to extrapolate form the fictional romantic reading of history to assume that this is the origin of religion is just silly. This is not social science it's bull shit. Surely an alien from an advanced race light years away who could construct a way to get to earth, must be sociologist, I can't see any other reason why intelligent life would want to come here! So I can't believe advanced alien sociology is so backward!

Then someone had the bright idea of worshipping an omnipotent god who controlled everything, but even that omnipotent God couldn't keep all of his followers on the same page. And B) Religion did help bring people together for common activities during and after the transition from a mostly nomadic species of hunter-gatherers to a more settlement-based society.

That's really a Lamarkian account. But myth of worshiping gods is not the origin of religion. Religion is not about gods, it existed a long time before they had gods. This is the Freudian motivations reading themselves into history to do battle with the father. In other words atheists are so hung up on hating their own fathers (which psychologists have predicted) that they become focused on fighting the father figure in religion. Even if a particular atheist had a good relationship with a good father (I did, I was an atheist I had a great Dad), those Freudian motivations are still there so even people with healthy relations can get hung up on opposing the father figure. Before they had gods religions had spirits, and they used mazes and the hunt as focal points of sense of the numinous. They weren't trying to explain anything except why they had this sense of something behind it all. Everything they did was at an organic level, the mysteries of birth, life, and death, the need for wholeness and complication and integration with nature and the cosmos this what lies behind it all. They experienced it as an organic whole in daily life, not some question they could set aside and debate. There are labyrinths in Scandinavia that go back to late megalithic times. The labyrinth was an ancient symbol of the journey of life and used in religious devotion and markings as far back as we find any evidence of humanity. That's the origin of those Celtic lines we see decorating megalithic tombs in the British Isles. It wasn't about "why does it rain?" It was about life, read the Ideonopolis quote from above."By contrast, faith is about the nonobservable, life-shaping vision of transcendence held by a participant..."

article on labyrinths
(this article is a bunch of new age blather but it demonstrates the spiritual connection to labyrinths and some of their presence in ancient times). In researching my book, The Trace of God (soon to be released) I found evidence of stone age mazes and labyrinths that indicate the spiritual connection going back into pre history.

Meta:

“(3) since they assume science is the only form of knowledge they assume that scinece must be the origin of all human thought.” Brap: Quite the contrary, I know the human brain is quite capable of thinking up non-sciencey stuff. “(4) it assumes creation myths are the actual accretion of ancient religious wisdom”

Brap: It doesn’t really matter to me whether a creation myth is the accretion of ancient religious wisdom, the foundation of a religion, or just a side story. The fact that the creation story in Genesis was generally accepted as fact only until the evidence against it became overwhelming, and is still accepted as fact by some people, is troublesome.

It is only so due to the fundie baggage that says everything in the Bible must be literal history and must be true in a literalistic way. Why should the fact of mythological symbols that speak to the psche wrapped in an ancient myth spell any sort of problem with belief in God? That's especially so when we consider that no one really believes BECAUSE of such myths? I don't know anyone who says "I was an atheist until I read about Adam and Eve boy that really conveniences me." It's just a simple matter these myths clinging to a tradition becuase people forgot what they are for and began to push them literal history in response to historical happenstance (Darwin). The whole point of being liberal in the theological sense is to analyze accurately the historical nature of faith, separate the historical baggage from the acute bits, and move toward some sort of progressive understanding. You can't do that if you are not prepared to find that there actually is some baggage to move beyond!

Friday, August 20, 2010

Part 1 of 2 (maybe 3): In the category of better late than never, my comments:

Meta: "Any given argument might be rationally warranted, depending upon how it's argued. Rational warrant is like "logical permission to believe something" not actual proof. A person is logically justified in not believing something if that person truly has no reason to believe it."

Brap: I had long response written about that paragraph, but in the end it didn't really go where I thought it was going. Maybe this will be shorter. Essentially I think it boils down to when an argument for rational belief or non-belief is presented, the debaters will treat it as an argument for proof of that position and respond accordingly, as you did in this post and as your friendly (and not-so-friendly) atheist opponents do on your site. I can understand your not wanting to present your arguments as positive proof of God's existence, but that's how they are perceived and addressed by the peanut gallery. Just an observation, really, since I don't think it matters whether you call it rationally warranted belief or proof of God's existence, the responses will likely be the same.

That's true. you are right but I don't know what to do about it. If you go on not making arugments they dance around going "there's no proof, there's no proof!" Now they will never ever never never admit a God argument has a good point, but at least they shut them up for a bit and one can tell they are worried when their answers are so bad it's obvious they are beaten they get testy and all, so the arguments are rhetorically necessary.

Meta: "Why do I say that "I have never seen God" and the other initial responses are only understandable for someone who has never read a book and knows nothing about modern thought? . . . I include these answers because they are fallacious as reasons not to believe in God."

Brap: These points were just to establish that God is not part of the perceived universe. (Dividing the universe (or whatever the universe is a subset of) into three categories: Perceived, Detectable, and Theoretical.) God may have chosen to be part of the perceived universe for some people in the Old Testament, but that doesn’t seem to be the case in modern times.

Yes God is part of the perceived universe. It just depends upon how one is perceiving it. God is not given in sense data, but that's a given. We all know that. Atheists accept all kinds of things that are not given in sense data. Phenomenological methods go around sense data.

Brap: 5. I am not aware of any evidence of God’s interaction with our world. Natural laws can explain how things work and why things happen, as far as I know.

I am part of the world, I have interaction with God. Natural law is a game atheists play. When they need to deny it's perspective nature they do so, then when they need to be so they spring back tot he point there it's prescriptive.

Meta: “We should not expect to see anything but natural laws at work in the world becasue they are made to work autonomously. But such laws are a dead give away that there has to be a mind running the universe at some level, see my 3d God argument, "fire in the equations.""

Brap: Can we tell the difference between these three things: a) A God that interacts with our world in ways that do not appear to violate the laws of nature. (In other words, undetectable.)

Yes we can tell the difference but not in ways that demonstrate the reality of God as objectively demonstrable apart form other phenomena. So those ways discerning it may always be subjective and thus can't be used as proof, but for the person willing to make a leap of faith they can used as a guide. One way to distinguish that is not so subjective is porobablity. For exmaple the probability of religoius experience as prophetically noetic and transformative (positive, not negative at all, teaching and restoring and reviving one to a higher life) as a total accident or misfire of the neural net is so extremely improbable that the result of religious experience are a good indication of God, that's why I call it the book The Trace of God. Although that is meant to be undestood as the Derridian trace.

b) A God that does no longer interacts with our world, because nature runs on its own and works autonomously.

God does interact with the world. The sense of the numinous and the sense of God's presence the feeling of God's love are interactions.I do believe that God answers prayer. I beieve the Lourdes miracles are good evidence to that effect.

c) A God that does not exist.

Yes obviously there's a difference in God not given in sense data and not there being no God. The term "exist" has implications for Tillich, and as a student of Tillich's thought (although unfortunately not of his classes in seminary) I have to point this out. But never mind that, there is a difference in the reality of the divine and not being able to objectively demonstrate that reality to one who does not wish to see it subjectively.

Brap:Your “fire in the equations” argument seems very similar to the argument for intelligent design, which simply theorizes that absent a more plausible scientific theory regarding the origin of an apparently designed X, some sort of intelligence is behind it.

It's similar to a design argument but it doesn't suffer from the fatal falw in most design arguments, that we don't have something known to be designed or undersigned to compare it to. This is becuase comparing to law and mind we do have previous laws and minds to compare to. Rather than God of the gaps, this is atheism of the gaps. The argument doesn't just turn on a gap, it's a logical problem; how can you have a law based upon the tendencies of universe braining that universe into existence? What are "tendencies" derived from prior to the existence of the thing with the tendencies? That would seem to mandate prescriptive laws. But if the laws are prescriptive what else makes prescriptive laws but a mind? Dawkins wants us to be persuaded by the issue that only brains produce minds and only bodies produce brains, so God must have a body or he can't have a mind. But here's evdience of mind apart from body, yet it's based upon something we also never see, prescriptive laws apart from mind. How do you get a prescription without a mind to write it?

Brap:(Intelligence - - > Supreme Being - - > God) I will agree that the appearance of design does exist in both DNA and the laws of physics, but at one point in the not too distant past the human body appeared to be intelligently designed, as did the arrangement of the earth, moon, sun and stars.

"supreme being" wrong terminology, violation of Tillichism. Begging question, you do not know that there is not intelligent design so you can't use the existence of things in nature as proof that such design is not needed. Here the skeptical answers suffers from the same flaw as the design argument. But again, we have minds to compare to in judging about prescriptive law.

Brap:Science eventually closed those gaps in human knowledge, so fewer and fewer gaps needed God as an explanation. Right now the last two major gaps seem to be abiogenesis and the Big Bang.

Science did not close any gaps, that's a misunderstanding. The reason religion exists is not to explain things. The reasons for belief in God are not based the need to explain the world. There are major gaps in that regard that can't be answered, such as the need for final cause. But be that as it may even that was "closed" as you say, it would not dissipate the need for religion becuase that's not what religion is predicated upon. Religion is predicated upon the sense of the numinous. That is not a gap, either you sense it or you don't.

There is no scientific proof that demonstrates that the world was not created. There is no scientific proof that demonstrates there is no divine aspect to reality. Science is as untried and untested in that regard as it was in 1492 or 1200 or 300 BC. The situation with regard to the big bang is not so simple that all we need do is find some half assed cause to stick on it and everything is proved. As I quoted Hawking recently saying when we get all that sorted out then we will be in a position to ask "why is there something rather than nothing?" But even so science can never ask that. If you know all there is to know scientifically you can't derive a "why" from an is. You always have to step beyond scinece and enter the world of metaphysics in order to even ask the question. Indeed scinece is metaphysics but most of it's adorers will never admit that. Science is like a southern belle who happens to be a prostitute. All her suitors spend their time hanging around outside her door refusing to accept that it could be the case, before they go in and pay for her favors. It's really metaphysics in disguise. But it can't legitimately incorporate metaphysical questions without admitting that.

Brap:But I don’t push the God of the Gaps argument because it’s really pointless. If and when science does solve that last remaining gap, the believers will simply say, “So that’s how God did it” and continue believing.

I'm already saying it because that's not a reason for belief. Atheists always assume it is becuase it has to do with their reasoning. Having an alternate explanation will get the atheist off the hook, in terms of having to believe because it's the only explainable. So atheists approach reality as nothing but a surface level collections of things, the existence of which has to be explained. So they imagine the reason for belief is nothing more than a surface level explanation. The reason for belief in God is realization about the depth of being. Belief in God is not just adding a fact to the universe. God is not merely another "thing" alongside the list of things that exist. Belief in Bod is realization that one is contingent, that being has depth. Being more than just the surface fact of things existing, it's the why of existence as well.

There's a lot more to this exchange but I'll do that ni the next couple of days.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Originally I had written a different essay (a better one) but I had problems trying to post and it was lost. So this is a re-hash for the spur of the moment, My apologizes but the original run of this post seemed to interest readers.

Atheists have a new trick--which is actually their original trick but dusted off. They seem to be on a tangent of arguing that "there's no proof for your God." Of course, they have never really stopped saying that. But perhaps a new generation is coming up. I find more of them more often arguing that there is not "one single piece of scientific evidence..." When I put out several posts on the CARM atheist board similar to the previous post here, Kuhn, science is a social construct, they just went ape. One of them was saying "you are making such a fool of yourself to say these things..." Of course it takes real ignorance no to know that no so long ago (mid 90's perhaps) Kuhn was hot stuff. He was a major force, considered a major thinker in the world for about four decades. But I'm making a fool of myself! When I told them we should not expect to find scientific of evdience of God because God is not a scientific question they just sort of blinked their eyes (in writing so to speak) and said "that's why you shouldn't believe in him." Before it was all said and done one of them had made several pronouncements to the effect that "science tells us everything that is worth knowing and if something isn't given in science it's not worth knowing." Moreover, "the only meaningful questions are scientific questions because that's what makes them meaningful." I bet that guy is magic in a relationship.

What can one say? Everyone likes a booster. When confronted with the challenge to prove that science is the only valid form of knowledge--with scientific data only--of course they responded with philosophical arguments and logic. Naturally they never tried to offer one single piece of evidence from science, and when I put up the post defending religious experience with 300 studies they just poo pooed and said it wasn't science. So science is the only valid knowledge, but you can't prove that with science, and when it supports religion it's not science. Of course the real problem is its impossible to really tell people why we believe in God. No one actually comes to believe because of some fact or argument. It's so ultra foolish to expect scientific proof because belief is a world view, it's not based upon any one fact, but upon thousands of fact, upon the way we look at ourselves and the world. It's important to make God arguments, not to prove the existence of God, but because you can't say "I have reasons, they are supported by lots of things and deal and junk and stuff." God arguments help us to focus on detailed reasons that support belief, but they are not meant to prove anything.

The real problem is, on the one hand, the believer really doesn't have a single cogent provable reason for belief, on the other hand, the atheist doesn't understand the nature of world views. Atheists don't understand their own unbelief. They can't get it that they are touting an ideology. They think all the have to do is say "it's the absence of a belief" and that's suppose to make it real simple and clear it of any ideological connotations. But its' not that simple. Belief is a world view.It's foundational, that is is serves as the basis for everything else you think and the ways you view the world. You can't just take out the centerpiece of a world view and not replace it with something. Its' absurd to say "atheism is just the absence of a belief" there is no such thing. The absence of a belief is the presence of unbelief and that is an ideology. This is what Derrida teaches us: absence is presence and presence is absence. It's easy to be a skeptic all you have to do is just keep doubting things and demeaning that no evidence is of any value until it lines up with the ideology. But they have a very clear ideology to fill in the blank left by God and it is based upon reductionism. Nothing short of absolute scientific proof will do becasue the absence of the foudnation requires the presence of a replacement foundation.

atheists can only see the primitive misunderstanding, they can't see the sense of transcendence behind it.

Maslow talks about the psychological necessity of being able to maintain a tranformative symbology. He is not merely saying that we should do this, but that we do it, it is universal and through many different technqiues and psychological schools of thought he shows that this has been gleaned over and over again. What Jung called the Archetypes are universal symbols of transfomration which we understand in the uncoscious, and we must be able to hold them in proper relation to the mundane (the Sacred and the Profane) in order to enjoy healthy growth, or we stagnate and become pathological. It is crucial to human psychology to maintain this balance. Far from merely being stupid and not understanding science, striving to expalin a pre-Newtonian world, the primatives understood this balance and held it better than we do. Religious beleif is crucial to our psychological well being, and this fact far more than social order or the need for examplianation exaplians the origins of religion.

Quote:

"For practically all primitives, these matters that I have spoken about are seen in a more pious, sacred way, as Eliade has stressed, i.e., as rituals, ceremonies, and mysteries. The ceremony of puberty, which we make nothing of, is extremely important for most primitive cultures. When the girl menstruates for the first time and becomes a woman, it is truly a great event and a great ceremony; and it is truly, in the profound and naturalistic and human sense, a great religious moment in the life not only of the girl herself but also of the whole tribe. She steps into the realm of those who can carry on life and those who can produce life; so also for the boy's puberty; so also for the ceremonies of death, of old age, of marriage, of the mysteries of women, the mysteries of men. I think that an examination of primitive or preliterate cultures would show that they often manage the unitive life better than we do, at least as far as relations between the sexes are concerned and also as between adults and children. They combine better than we do the B and the D, as Eliade has pointed out. He defined primitive cultures as different from industrial cultures because they have kept their sense of the sacred about the basic biological things of life.

"We must remember, after all, that all these happenings are in truth mysteries. Even though they happen a million times, they are still mysteries. If we lose our sense of the mysterious, or the numinous, if we lose our sense of awe, of humility, of being struck dumb, if we lose our sense of good fortune, then we have lost a very real and basic human capacity and are diminished thereby."

"Now that may be taken as a frank admission of a naturalistic psychological origin, except that it invovles a universal symbology which is not explicable through merely naturalistic means. How is it that all humans come to hold these same archetypical symbols? (For more on archetypes see Jesus Chrsit and Mythology page II) The "prematives" viewed and understood a sense of transformation which gave them an integration into the universe. This is crucial for human development. They sensed a power in the numenous, that is the origin of religion."

He is saying that the reductionist can only see a flimsy superstition in such primitive doings, but the real knight of faith sees in it the sense of the numinous the way religion really affects people on in daily life. In the words of Thomas Indinopulos:

I think this is a healthy development. When emphasis shifts away from what a Christian believes or does not believe, we can begin to understand the power and meaning of Christianity in a given culture, at a certain time. In other words, I should say that a better way to ascertain Christian belief is to focus on how Christians actually live their lives. I say this on the basis of years spent with Greek villagers who, when asked what they believe, can hardly answer in any precise way. But ask them how they would identify themselves as Greek Orthodox and you will hear a recital of ritual observances and traditional acts of faith that leave no doubt that their faith is not a matter of what is believed or thought about, but rather what is done or felt or imagined. For such villagers the daily life of faith is not reducible to or equatable with a set of formal beliefs. The academic or pedagogical implications here are enormous. When professors teach Christianity as a matter of beliefs, ideas, and institutions, they may be teaching something that is not at all equivalent to the religion practiced by the people who claim the Christian religion as their own. But if they were to teach Christianity as practiced, they would have to pay attention to that which is not so easily categorized as doctrine -- the unspoken, often emotional undertones of faith on the part of ordinary believers.

My point being that real belief is faith, not words on paper. The reasons people relay believe in God have to do with the way they sense their presence in the world and the relation to that sense of God which they also intuit in the world. A good example of this came out in a message board discussion I had on CARM recently:

I don't remember who the other party in the discussion was, I'll just call him "friendly atheist."

Quote:Originally Posted by Metacrock View Post
the studies show believers are less depressed. you should encourage her faith even if you dont' believe in it. I'm not saying it's your fault but obviously it's very damaging to someone who fervently believes to have that crushed. Please don't think I'm accusing you.

FA:Many of us who are no longer believers have dealt with the transition. I'm not sure that 'damaging' is the correct word. Sometimes growth is hard. Sometimes realizing that what you believed for a long time is false can be hard to deal with. It requires a commitment to intellectual honesty and a desire to know rather than to believe.

Meta: a lot will depend upon why the loss of faith. If one outgrows the Provencal nature of one's faith context, then it's not damaging it's actually a form of growth. Unfortunately due to the fundies and other religious people a lot of people never find the more progressive style of faith so they don't go on with it. But to lose faith due to personal tragedy or just being worn down and not having a chance to cultivate it is deadly. it's killing.

Quote:FA:My wife and I don't argue about it. I'm not 'anti' about it.

Meta: that's good. what do you hope for? The best you can do is momentary happiness and not really that if you have hard times.

FA:Even in hard times there are things that can be hoped for. I hope for ease, happiness, love, the same as anyone

Meta:Yes but I have someone to trust in hard times. I know from personal experince I can trust God to me through anything. I'm not the least bit worried about the backing collapse. I expect to die in the gutter but I'm looking froward to a lot of republicans learning something!

more than just beyond life. It's the hope that some force of love cares about you.

FA:I prefer to be loved by someone rather than think that I am loved by a 'force'. Perhaps being loved by a force is sufficient for many people but 'love' to me is an active thing.

Meta:I understand why it would be hard for you to think of god as real, but It's not all hard for me. In fact the opposite. it's nearly impossible for the to deny God's reality, becasue the experinces I've had cannot be denied.

even in times when I thought God abandoned me I was still not wiling to give up the concept, I was willing to think of God as impersonal before I was willing to say there wasn't one. Then he came through and I knew I just needed to trust.

I know it's hard for you think of that as a reality since you have not experienced it. but I have and i know it's real. I know it as well as I know I exist myself.

Meta:It's not the hope of getting money because you pray for it anything like that. But meaning in life gives hope.

FA:I agree. I would rather have real meaning than imaginary meaning. But either way, whether one believes that God has a purpose or if one gives credit to something else for their purpose, ultimately it all comes from the self. WE determine our purpose, our meaning.

Meta:meaning that I get from God is a priroi. IT is real and it doesn't depend upon the existence of a God with a mind who knows who I am. Just the attitude to being that undersatnd from studying theology gives me a rock solid meaning that can't be deneied. It is real and I prove it's real (the meaning that is not the being named God who thinks and knows who I am).

Now I believe God is mind and knows who I am but even at a default of an impersonal ;God who si just being itself and nothing ore the meaning that comes from that is undeniable.

but the experinces I've had lead me to have a major hope because I know God is real and is more than just being.

Quote:
Quote:
Atheists can only have localized small letter meaning, meaning that is related to the immediate context. Believers in God can have big capital letter meaning.

FA:Atheists and believers are no different here, the 'meaning' in our lives comes from the same place, ourselves. Some just have the need to put the cause on something else.

Meta:I disagree. I've been both. I was a Sartean atheist so the idea of making youkr own meaning was crucial to my thinking. it was total revolution when I got saved. It was day from night.

repentance is not just saying words. It means "turn from sin" so you are changing your thinking and your behavior. if one really repents one does not want to do the same things again.

FA:Did the thief on the cross do more than just say the words?

Meta:Yes, he sure as hell did. His words were not empty they were backed by the attitude of the heart, which is true repentance. He did more than say words, he repented, he turned his heart toward God!

Monday, August 16, 2010

Our famous visitor form another planet, Brap Gronck, makes I comment that I feel is a great chance to get on my soap box. First here is the full comment:

Since you mentioned rationally warranted belief in your most recent comment, I have a question for you. Let’s assume someone is unaware of the case you present for belief being rationally warranted. Let’s also assume the seven points below are true for this person. Would you agree that non-belief is rationally warranted for that person, given the following seven points, or any subset of these points?

1. I have never seen God.
2. I have never heard God.
3. I don’t know anyone who has ever seen God, or claimed to have seen God.
4. I don’t know anyone who has ever heard God, or claimed to have heard God.
5. I am not aware of any evidence of God’s interaction with our world. Natural laws can explain how things work and why things happen, as far as I know.
6. Humans have wondered about the origins of the earth, the sun, the stars, and themselves for a long time. Many creation myths were developed in ancient times in an attempt to explain these origins, and these creation myths are easily proven to be untrue given the current state of scientific knowledge. The account of creation in the book of Genesis appears to be another easily disproven creation myth.
7. I have read “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, and I can’t think of anything in that book I disagree with.

My initial answer was to say this:

Meta:

Thumbnail answer: Any given argument might be rationally warranted, depending upon how it's argued. Rational warrant is like "logical permission to believe something" not actual proof.

A person is logically justified in not believing something if that person truly has no reason to believe it.

However, there's a point at which one can go beyond the line of credulity. For example the reasons you gave for not believing would only be understandable for someone who never actually read a book and knows nothing about modern thought at all.

Now let's break it down:

Why do I say that "I have never seen God" and the other initial responses are only understandable for someone who has never read a book and knows nothing about modern thought? The answers he gave that I put in this category are:

1. I have never seen God.
2. I have never heard God.
3. I don’t know anyone who has ever seen God, or claimed to have seen God.
4. I don’t know anyone who has ever heard God, or claimed to have heard God.

I include these answers because they are fallacious as reasons not to believe in God. Let's consider them for a moment as reasons not to believe something we can reasonably sure is true: I have never seen an atom. I have never heard an atom. I don't know anyone who has ever seen an atom I don't know anyone who has ever heard an atom. If one lives in a Modern industrial country and has a college education that person must know that the absurdly simplistic world view of CARM atheists (atheists who post on the message boards at CARM) is extremely simplistic and overly lauds a reductionist outlook while ignoring all evidence to the contrary of that view. Anyone with a college education should know that modern physics, for example, is largely theoretical and deals with things no readily observable. Even a middle school student would know that now days seeing and hearing something are too surface level to understand as epistemic proof. Any one who has been around since Descartes ought to know that. I'm just assuming a sparse exposure to philosophy. Anyone with any kind of real knowledge of religious belief should understand that 99.9% of religious people in the world do not believe the deity is physically observable.

No 5 is an interesting case:

5. I am not aware of any evidence of God’s interaction with our world. Natural laws can explain how things work and why things happen, as far as I know.

Of course that statement suffers from the same flaws as the first four (I assume "our world" means the life world of 20th century earth not this guy's pretend planet). In that sense this is just a multiplication of examples from 1-4. But it also appeals to natural laws in general as an alternative to belief in God. Logically that's a non starter because no religious person I know of has said that physical laws are opposed to God, or God has to make things happen directly without recourse to natural law. Atheists have this odd habit of thinking that just becuase it's "natural" it guaranteed to be separate from God. the reason for that is because LaPlace assumed so ("I have no need of that hypothesis"). He was basically the one who kicked off the secular nature of modernity and offered physical law as an alternative to God. But religious people don't' understand it that way. Nature did not just pop up out of nothing, God created it. Of course we will observe nature seeming to run on its own because God created it to be that way; in fact Newton advanced that notion with his theory of comets. Thus, that is all we would see. We should not expect to see anything but natural laws at work in the world becasue they are made to work autonomously. But such laws are a dead give away that there has to be a mind running the universe at some level, see my 3d God argument, "fire in the equations."

The last two points he makes do present some challenge and are moving in the direction of valid reasons for unbelief. They are not really justifications for unbelief, but the thing is I can hear my old inner atheist saying "unbelief needs no justification." I am not sure that's true I think it depends upon one's level of education. The more one has been exposed to good reason to believe the more accountable one is for unbelief short of valid justifications. Obviously what I said above holds, that "A person is logically justified in not believing something if that person truly has no reason to believe it." In the sense that no reason means one is a priori without reason to believe that state of being requires no justification but is self justifying. On the other hand, how any atheists who post on message boards or read blogs are truly without exposure to any good reason fro belief? I would venture none really. This is where atheist incredulity kicks in. Most atheists are opposed to the concept of belief regardless of evidence so for most atheists there can be no such thing as "good reason" to believe. Moreover, this is the clash of paradigms. For those still live and work in a paradigm based upon natural law as the basis of reality and no God, there can be no such thing as 'reason to believe.' For those who live in a believer's world (by virtue of their paradigm) no justification is needed. It's only where the two agree to meet and trade view points and do mutual learning that a common ground is created upon which a discussion can place. Only on that ground can a "good reason" or a justification matter.

Brap says:

6. Humans have wondered about the origins of the earth, the sun, the stars, and themselves for a long time. Many creation myths were developed in ancient times in an attempt to explain these origins, and these creation myths are easily proven to be untrue given the current state of scientific knowledge. The account of creation in the book of Genesis appears to be another easily disproven creation myth.

This is interesting because he takes at face value the creation myth as the point of departure for justification. This is baggage from the assumptions atheist make in transiting form religious world to secular world, and the kind of thing atheists get stuck on as a quasi justification for their view. It demonstrates an inability to take the religious world at face value and refuses to think of religious thought as modern thought but insists upon rooting it in ancinet outlooks that apply to any modern believer. It also makes makes several root assumptions of which Brap has probably not even though of (not to sell the guy short, but I doubt that many atheists think about these things).

(1) it assumes that the reason for belief in modern world is the same as the reason for the existence of religion in the ancient world.

(2) it assumes that religion exists in order to explain where we came from,as though that's the only major question that really concenred ancinet man (which if you think about it is based upon an hidden assumption that all of human knowledge and development turns upon some ancient desire to do scinece).

(3) since they assume science is the only form of knowledge they assume that scinece must be the origin of all human thought.

(4) it assumes creation myths are the actual accretion of ancient religious wisdom

Modern religious people are modern people. Many of them may be less educated in certain area, although there is no shortage of religious people in the sciences and in other areas of higher education. A Gallop poll in the 90s found that taking all fields into account the percentages of modern professors in universities and their religious beliefs reflect that of the general population. The study that finds only 5% of NAS people who believe God is based upon a strict fundamentalist definition of God and confined to a self selecting body. Another study found that 45% of all people with scientific degrees bleieve in God. The point is that modern religious people are modern people. Their beliefs are not based upon ancinet creation myths, their belief systems include a harmonization of scinece and faith in a modern sense. I doubt that anyone actually believes in God because of the Genesis creation myth. Science is not the origin of religion. Religion did not evolve because people wanted to explain physical things. Religious evolved out of the human contact with the sense of the numinous.

"The experience of pure consciousness is typically called "mystical". The essence of the mystical experience has been debated for years (Horne, 1982). It is often held that "mysticism is a manifestation of something which is at the root of all religions (p. 16; Happold, 1963)." The empirical assessment of the mystical experience in psychology has occurred to a limited extent."

Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., is a monk of Mount Savior Monastery in the Finger Lake Region of New York State and a member of the board of the Council on Spiritual Practices. He holds a Ph.D. from the Psychological Institute at the University of Vienna and has practiced Zen with Buddhist masters. His most recent book is Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer (Ramsey, N.J.: Paulist Press, 1984).

"If the religious pursuit is essentially the human quest for meaning, then these most meaningful moments of human existence must certainly be called "religious." They are, in fact, quickly recognized as the very heart of religion, especially by people who have the good fortune of feeling at home in a religious tradition."

"It is the experience of the transcendent, including the human response to that experience, that creates faith, or more precisely the life of faith. [Huston] Smith seems to regard human beings as having a propensity for faith, so that one speaks of their faith as "innate." In his analysis, faith and transcendence are more accurate descriptions of the lives of religious human beings than conventional uses of the word, religion. The reason for this has to do with the distinction between participant and observer. This is a fundamental distinction for Smith, separating religious people (the participants) from the detached, so-called objective students of religious people (the observers). Smith's argument is that religious persons do not ordinarily have "a religion." The word, religion, comes into usage not as the participant's word but as the observer's word, one that focuses on observable doctrines, institutions, ceremonies, and other practices. By contrast, faith is about the nonobservable, life-shaping vision of transcendence held by a participant..." Smith considers transcendence to be the one dimension common to all peoples of religious faith: "what they have in common lies not in the tradition that introduces them to transcendence, [not in their faith by which they personally respond, but] in that to which they respond, the transcendent itself..."(11)

Creation myths as we know them are late inventions. The Cosmogony became a form of literature and is based upon thousands of variations and re tellings and old old camp fire fare long before anyone ever wrote them down. Thus they are not reasons fro belief. They are something much different than reasons to believe. They are not even really explainations. Creation myths as we know them are mythology and mythology is about archetypes, it's a form of communication that speaks to the psyche it's not a naive simple transition of factual data. A mythology is a symbolic transmission of unconscious understanding. It's about the psyche not about history.

Brap's final statement:

7. I have read “The Demon-Haunted World” by Carl Sagan, and I can’t think of anything in that book I disagree with.

I have not read that book, but I'd be willing to bet that he got it wrong. If what Brap is saying is an accurate reflection I would assume that Sagan makes the same fallacious assumptions that Brap does. I suggest one read Joseph Campbell (The Hero With A Thousand Faces) as an introduction to mythology. That book is too anti-Christian but it will give one a much better understanding of mythology than will Carl Sagan! Ancient studies were not even his field. I'm betting me mad all sort of outmoded assumptions about religion, probalby nineteenth century assumptions, most atheists are stuck in the nineteenth century when it comes to understanding religion.

The French revolution was not far behind and most of what scinece assumed about religion was conditioned by Laplace and the reason for that was becuase the French Philosophes set the tone for ant-clerical thinking due to the enormous influence that the Catholic chruch wielded in relation to the french Monarchy. The Monarchy used priests as enforcers of the educational system and other things that created a lot of enmity with the people. Fighting against the Monarchy in the revolution and opposing the Church became one and the same thing. That set in motion the anti-clerical thinking of Europe which dominated the development of scinece in the nineteenth century. Social scinece were just getting started, sociology developed out of France with August Compt and thus it took the form of seeking to explain why religious belief began and to set it apart from modern thought, as a means of justifying the existence of the new scinece. Though most social scientists don't make a habit of running down religion as the hallmark of their disciplines in those days they did, because that was the basic origin of sociology.

We need to move beyond the simplistic understanding of the world that seeks to set "scientifically proved" "facts" as the foundation of the world view off against all other forms of knowledge. This is the hall mark of the atheist ideology, to create the pretense that scinece is the only form of knowledge, that atheism is scientific (it's really anti-scientific becuase it refuses to accept any scientific facts that back religion while claiming to be totally scientific in its outlook and the falling back on the ideolgoical slogan "atheism is just the lack of a bleief, nothing else"). Thus we need to shed this delimiting crutch that only "scientific proof" counts as a valid reason to believe something and move toward a global understanding of knowledge in general.

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